Ethereum has been known for its upgrades that spruce up the network. It was recently revealed that the Berlin upgrade was finally set to be deployed. In a recent announcement, Ethereum’s lead developer, Tim Beiko reported that Berlin was set to go live with about four EIPs in place.
With a long pause between the Istanbul hard fork that took place in December 2019 and the Muir Glacier upgrade in January 2020, Berlin was reportedly scheduled for around 14 April 2021 precisely at block 12,244,000 on the Ethereum mainnet.
Berlin Scheduled For 14 April 2021
Beiko, in the post, pointed out that the first testnet before the Berlin upgrade would be Ropsten and is expected to go live on 10 March 2021. This would further be followed by Goerli and Rinkeby.
About four EIPs are included in the latest upgrade. Namely,
- EIP-2565 would lower the ModExp Gas Cost
- EIP-2718 would interject a new transaction type to aid multiple transactions
- EIP-2929 would raise certain gas costs
- EIP-2930 would focus on optional access lists
Furthermore, with the upcoming hard fork, the developer urged node operators of the network to upgrade their nodes before the actual fork if they intended to be a part of it. Doing this, several days before the upgrade could help due to the variability in block time.
Upgrading the client versions was also important for the node operators to be compatible with the Berlin upgrade. The clients part of this upgrade were go-ethereum [geth], OpenEthereum [f.k.a Parity], Nethermind as well as Besu. The post read,
“Note, TurboGeth and EthereumJS will not have client releases ready for the first testnets, but will have a release prior to mainnet. We will update this post as their releases become available. Trinity is now deprecated and will not be supporting the Berlin upgrade.”
While EIP-1559 which keeps the gas fees in check, is awaited by the entire community, it is said to take place during the London hard fork.